


Gather Ye Rosebuds

by lazywriter7



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, BAMF Tony Stark, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Growing Old Together, Happy Ending, Infinity War (Marvel Comics), M/M, POV Tony Stark, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve and Tony Through The Ages, Stony Trumps Hate 2017, The Avengers (2012) Compliant, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 08:38:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14185119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazywriter7/pseuds/lazywriter7
Summary: It isn’t like that, for many people. For them, loveisthe point: the axis around which everything else revolves, the destination at the end of a long, tumultuous journey. Realisation, confession, resolution. Happy ending. That’s how it goes. And love was a point in Tony Stark’s journey, except it came towards the beginning, rather than the end. The issue, instead of the solution.He hasn’t been alone on the trip, of course. Steve’s been there: sometimes three steps behind, sometimes waiting up ahead by the turn of the road. They’ve sprinted and stumbled, sometimes stood still and refused to move on ahead, sometimes thought of turning away altogether.Steve and Tony’s story began after they fell in love, and this is about how they fell in everything else.





	Gather Ye Rosebuds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PriyaxRishabh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PriyaxRishabh/gifts).



> This was written for the Stony Trumps Hate event, for a person who's been a shining light in the Stony fandom for me - Priya, you amazing person you. Thank you so much for bidding on me, for all your contributions to fandom and charity, and for this lovely, lovely prompt you left me that has taken me so effing long to finish XP
> 
> When I saw your picture prompt (see [here](https://78.media.tumblr.com/avatar_4f97772c2f1c_96.pnj) for small version), the first thought that struck me was, 'how did they get here?' And so over the course of time, this fic has evolved into something of a love-letter to SteveTony, particularly the MCU versions, and all the reasons why we have angry rants about them but still can't give up on this goshdarned ship. Also thanks to Jade for said art that inspired this whole thing.
> 
> For additional notes about the fic and ahem, upcoming updates about some other WIP's I have, please skip to end notes.

Tony’s always been a bit late, to get with the plan.

Take Iron Man. Not many people decide to switch career paths to superheroing in their forties. It’s a regret that festers under his chest, quiet and painful, to this day. How different could things have been had he shaken off the haze of alcohol and untreated grief sooner? How many more lives could have been saved had Iron Man taken to the skies ten years before the Chitauri split it in half?

So yeah. He takes his time to get on board with things; maybe it’s the obstinate contrarian in him, maybe it’s the paranoid bastard. Almost all the sore spots in his memory stem from absent wishes: to have been faster off the ground, better.

(Steve tells him he’s being unreasonable, that he sees farther and acts more proactively than any person Steve’s ever known. Tony doesn’t tell him that he stopped measuring himself by other people’s yardsticks a long time ago. Steve was a part of that lesson, after all.

But then Steve doesn’t meet his eyes, and maybe he knows anyway.)

It’s practically encoded into the DNA of a futurist: mingled with the marrow of their bones. The regret, muted ache and white-hot agony by turns, propelling him faster and further like a stallion under the lash. He can’t wait for all the variables to reveal themselves. He can’t even wait for the problem.  Time is his enemy, and he has to, _needs_ to outstrip it, outwit it.

For all of that, though. All of his blinding compulsion to solve issues before they arise, save the world before it gets set on fire. This… _this_. This is one thing he finds himself strangely incapable of lamenting.

He knows what he’s supposed to be thinking. _All these years. We could have…_

Wasted time pricks Tony sharper than anyone else. So what’s different about this?

_Could we have?_

Maybe it’s that the time wasn’t wasted after all.

Tony doesn’t think back to the instant he fell in love. Not merely because it was no single instant, but… after the ceaseless march of years and decades and what seems like entire ages, it almost feels unimportant.

Not that it isn’t important, to certain kinds of people. Love. It’s just that Tony has had more…significant emotions to contend with, all his life. Not that he knew that in his younger years.

Perhaps it’s wisdom, perhaps just a bitter kind of understanding; but Tony knows now he didn’t grow up an unloved child. In ways, that’s been the hardest thing to reconcile with. Maria, Howard…even Obie. Tony’s entire life has been a portrait of the cruelties inflicted despite of…because of the veneer of love. And it hasn’t been a one-way street. Who better than Pepper Potts to tell you that Tony Stark’s love could cut deeper than it healed?

It isn’t like that, for many people. For them, love _is_ the point: the axis around which everything else revolves, the destination at the end of a long, tumultuous journey. Realisation, confession, resolution. Happy ending. That’s how it goes. And love _was_ a point in Tony Stark’s journey, except it came towards the beginning, rather than the end. The issue, instead of the solution.  

He hasn’t been alone on the trip, of course. Steve’s been there: sometimes three steps behind, sometimes waiting up ahead by the turn of the road. They’ve sprinted and stumbled, sometimes stood still and refused to move on ahead, sometimes thought of turning away altogether.

Steve and Tony’s story began after they fell in love, and this is about how they fell in everything else.

 

 

_Past:_

 

“Mathematically,” Tony announced, sliding into the urinal as easy as you’d please, “it should be impossible.”

Steve fumbled the zipper, poor lad. Presumably he’d never been ambushed in the classic, ‘oh look, I’m peeing next to you’ move. It was a modern classic. Tony was determined to acquaint him with at least one per interaction, to make up for all the coddling everyone else subjected him to.

Steve got it right on the second try, the _ziiip_ echoing quietly in the otherwise deserted washroom. Noise still rumbled faintly from the outside, the usual clamour of a kebab joint in Midtown at noon, for all that robots had hit the avenue two blocks over and the Avengers had thrashed their asses soundly. New Yorkers were a resilient species.

Steve turned on his heels swiftly and made for the ceramic washbasins on the opposite wall, but Tony was too quick for him. One step in, and Tony had already cut him off, shoes sliding across the tile as smoothly as if it were a dancefloor, slick with…actually, Tony shouldn’t dedicate too much thought to what the public washroom floor was slick with. Especially with Captain America standing three inches away from him. Was aroused disgust even supposed to be a thing?

“Stark, I swear– ” Steve’s hands rose as if half in mind to physically remove Tony out of his path, but they froze in mid-air, blue eyes darting to the urinals and back to his fingertips again, before they fell to his sides reluctantly.

Aw, such courtesy. Tony nodded at those half-curled hands knowledgeably, “You should probably wash those first.”

Steve’s jaw clenched, very subtly. Tony admired the strong lines of it, beatific smile in place. And then, with a pronounced shake of his head as if he’d forgotten his place in the script, stepped out of the way with a bow and an expansive, ‘after you’ gesture.

Steve shot a tight smile at him and moved towards the sinks, and Tony was half-certain he’d heard a muttered ‘”much obliged” over the sound of gurgling water hitting the ceramic. Seconds passed, occupied by the motions of Captain America working up a lather from public handwash and scrubbing the gaps between his fingers rigorously. Jeez, Tony bet he counted up to ten and waited for the germs to die and everything.

The sound of water rushing through the tap hit the air again, because of course Steve had turned it off while he was actually scrubbing his hands. Then, the tiniest of sighs from -dare Tony say it- a slightly defeated looking back.

“What should be mathematically impossible?”

Success. Tony strode over, turning to face Steve and cocking a hip against the neighbouring sink. Moisture was beginning to creep into his finely-tailored trouser wool, but sacrifices had to be made for style. “Thousands of genes present in the human genome, producing _millions_ of traits.”

Steve raised his eyes from his foamy palms, blue irises flicking over to settle on Tony’s face. Tony’s lip curled upwards challengingly. “Millions of traits, and not a single common one between you and I? Mathematically impossible, I refuse to believe it.”

Steve straightened, closing off the tap, leaving white flecks on the smooth steel. Reached over to tug at the roll of toilet paper on the counter, tearing off a scrap smoothly along the serrated edges. “We’re both white.”

“Har de har har.” Tony’s lips did flicker into something genuine for a second though. Goddamn it, this was why he was so insistent. Moments like these that convinced him that he and the good Captain could do better, _be_ better. They couldn’t be entirely exclusive sets, not with the way Steve needled at his curiosity so deliciously, made his big brain sit up and take notice.

Hands all wiped clean, Steve crumpled the soggy paper into a small ball. Paused for a second, then dabbed the soapy tap head spotless too. Tony sighed. “For fuck’s sake Cap, if you care so much about your bathroom routine, you can’t be entirely indifferent to your terrible dynamics with a teammate. We just saved the world, numero tres, for heaven’s sake.”

A twitch of a hand, and the toilet paper ball went flying through the air, landing in the centre of the wastebasket. Perfect aim. Steve turned those massive shoulders, clear eyes regarding Tony impassively. “Is that why you’re doing this? And not just because you like clambering on and stomping all over people’s nerves?”

“As Walt Whitman would say – I contain multitudes.” The curve of Tony’s lips grew more pronounced, delicately balanced between a smirk and a smile. “I’d quote more, _Song of Myself_ really is quite excellent, but it gets a little explicit what with the talk of assfuc–”

Steve parsed out a sigh of his own, somehow eloquent for a glorified, unsyllabic burst of air. “Why do you always have to–”

“Because I like having the last word.” Tony interrupted unceremoniously. “Winning.”

A well-crafted pause, an incisive gaze darting upwards.

“So do you, don’t you Steve?”

A longer pause. Steve didn’t drop Tony’s gaze, not even in his brief, acknowledging nod. “I do.”

“That tendency gets problematic, on opposing sides.” Tony murmured, eyes calm and knowing. “But we’re on the same team. A team of superheroes. And we kicked ass today.”

Another eloquent exhale. There was something more amused about it though, and something about the glimmer in those blue eyes, so rarely and welcomely conceding. “We did.”

Tony grinned, sharp and victorious. Steve didn’t look like he was too far behind, for all of his wholesome dimples. Ha, they could totally do this.

“It’s…less about winning,” and Tony wanted to cut him off immediately, but Steve so rarely begun new threads of conversation. It seemed important, somehow, to wait this one out. Pink lips flickered, pressing on themselves momentarily before continuing. “And more about being…good,” and cue eyeroll, no, bad Tony, _wait it the fuck out_ , “Being good at. Things.”

“I like being good at things.” Steve pushed out, almost like it was a confession, gaze getting just a little cloudy. But two blinks later, it cleared out just fine, and an almost rueful smile rose to prominence on those damnable lips. “Wasn’t too accustomed to that, before the serum. Tried and tried, but didn’t get anywhere. After…it didn’t seem right. To have all of those abilities, and still not do and be…good, the very best, at whatever I did.”

 _Wasn’t too good at things before the serum._ It was an entirely different narrative for Tony, but almost strange how it led to the same conclusion. Sometimes, most of the times, being good at things was the only worthwhile thing he had to cling to. The asshole who was still a genius, despite it all.

Of course, he didn’t say any of that. Except a muted, “Me too,” and the responding spark in Steve’s eyes let him know that no more would be required either.

A kid was screaming at his brother, in the restaurant outside. The sounds filtered through the walls, and Steve still hadn’t dropped his vague shadow of a smile. “You like strategy.”

Tony’s brows pulled together for a second. “Says Mr World-War-II-Captain, the red-white-and-blue Sun Tzu if I’m in the mood of being racially appropriative–”

“That video game you and Rhodey play, when he visits. _Civilization_.” Steve cut through unconcernedly, like his default good manners weren’t good enough for Tony. “It’s strategy based. I can tell.”

Tony huffed slightly. He was definitely going to beat Rhodey on that one, one of these days. And he was never, ever going to play with Steve. “You like blueberries.”

Another eloquent burst of sound – holy Brian Johnson, patron saint of rock and sinners everywhere, was that a _laugh_? Judging by Steve’s sparkling countenance, that would be a yes. “And you use them as literal manifestations of your ability to annoy people to death.”

“And feed them. Don’t forget the feeding.” Something in Tony’s shoulders was beginning to unravel, something that had been coiled tight ever since a fateful Helicarrier conversation, when he’d been dismissed as a knock-off hero. Had it really been so simple, all this while? Did he really have to do nothing more than _try_? “My berries contain multitudes too.”

Steve exhaled, light and amused, and it was almost surreal to think that it was coming from the same source as all those aggravated sighs. He turned to face the mirrors, motion efficient and soundless for all that muscled weight, blue eyes dipping down before rising to affix on his reflection. Tony watched them in the glass too.

“Every week, I go up to the terrace.” And it was strange, that for all the bouncing around that their conversation had been doing, that this particular one should feel apropos of nothing. But Steve was speaking slowly, lips carefully feeling out the words, eyes seemingly fixed on an absent point above his own shoulder. “The pool. I ask JARVIS to…to reduce the temperature. And I try to get in, as far as I can.”

It would have been convenient, for some sort of snarky commentary to float past Tony’s head right now, but his mind was blank. Steve breathed again, soft and so very careful. “I made it up to my navel, the last time.”

Tony hadn’t attended a pool party in…well, he didn’t quite remember. And the time he’d been giving the Avengers a Terrific Tower Tour, he’d averted his eyes from the glint of sunlight on the clear, chlorine-scented waters. He didn’t think anyone had noticed.

Blue eyes regarded him, calm and non-judgemental from the safety of a reflection. He’d evidently been mistaken.

(one issue, two entirely different methods of coping. Brave to the point of being masochistic, and severely avoidant. Polar opposites, probably both unhealthy. Damn if this didn’t define them to a tee.)

“See,” someone said, and it took a few seconds to register that it was him. “We have things in common after all.”

The echo of that smile returned on Steve’s lips. To be honest, even through all that, Tony wasn’t sure if it had ever entirely left. “Never said we didn’t.”

Quiet.

And then, because things were going well and he was Tony fucking Stark, he said, “You’re bisexual.”

(it was another of his avoidant schemes, if one bothered to keep track of those kind of things. Instead of, ‘I’m feeling vulnerable and want to take back some power in this situation’, it was, ‘I’m Tony fucking Stark’. Because Tony fucking Stark didn’t have intimacy issues, or defensive reflexes, or explicable, real emotions. Tony fucking Stark was an asshole just because.)

Steve Rogers, for his own bloody part, didn’t seem to miss a beat. Unwavering gaze and inflexible jaw and all. “So are you.”

Two seconds. Two seconds in which neither of them inched forward, but personal space seemed to shrink anyway, two seconds in which the walls seem to close around them and whisper tales of intimacy, two seconds that were enough for Tony to catch Steve’s gaze slipping to his lips, just once.

And Tony broke it, not just because he was Tony fucking Stark. “This doesn’t mean we need to hook up.”

Steve’s eyes grew unreadable. “I know that.”

 _Do you really?_ Soldiers. Tony had been surrounded by them all his life. For all that their little moments of joy weren’t inconsequential, they still hinged on conveniences. Take comfort from all quarters.

Well, Steve wasn’t in a warzone now, for all that his pain-ridden eyes seemed to forget that at times. So Tony finally took a physical step back, mouth curling up into that languid smirk it had apparently deserted some time during the course of this conversation. “Not that it would make any difference to our teammates. You know, what with us being in the men’s for over fifteen minutes now.”

A last burst of exhaled air, though the amusement in this didn’t seem as pure. Steve’s mouth curved to the side briefly, something almost like resignation flashing in his features. “Nice talk, Stark.”

And that built frame sidestepped him and walked away, door swinging open and shut behind Tony’s back not seconds later. Tony stood still, hands flexing inwards and out, trying to absently figure if the emotion curling through his gut was regret.

No. No it wasn’t. Because he wasn’t just a self-sacrificing moron judging the healthiness of Steve’s choices; he was selfish enough not to fuck up the first real progress he’d made with Steve by fucking Steve. Oh sure, sex wasn’t the devil. Sex was a good way to establish a line of communications, oftentimes. It was just that with Tony, that also tended to be the end of the road.

And he had this…let’s call it a hunch. A hunch that him and Steve still had a long ways left to go.

 

 

_Present:_

 

“The Director will see you now.”

“Well fuck the Director then,” the response rose to Tony’s lips all too naturally. “The Director can pay for my expensive back surgery. And my chiropractor.”

Agent Sixty Seven smiled at him dutifully, not an errant incisor to be seen, not even a mismanaged facial muscle. “This way please.”

Well then, Tony despaired, if even prudish SHIELD agents were used to his antics now, then what was the point of him really? Mind, he wasn’t even being that hyperbolic. His tailbone definitely twinged as he left the hardwood chair he’d been sprawling on for the last twenty minutes, and he wasn’t standing quite as straight as he’d like to be. Which wasn’t even that much, Tony was all for nonchalant slouching. It was all these robotic SHIELD agents that gave him complexes, what with the steel rulers taped to their spines.

His thoughts diverted him during the complicated entry procedures – retina scans and all, vaguely annoying but made way more sense than anyone just storming into the Director’s office as used to happen in the olden times, as they were. Procedures passed, the final doors slid open with a hydraulic hiss, Sixty Seven politely nodding at his back and taking their leave.

The office itself hadn’t changed much, except for possibly being barer and stark-er than it was the last time he’d dropped in – and that was stark with a small _and_ capital S, the modernist leanings he himself favoured in the scant décor were unmistakeable – “You had a haircut.”

Natasha raised her head, pixie-short hair curling under her earlobes. She’d left the grey at her temples untouched. “It was time.”

“I wish you wouldn’t.” Tony swung into the comfy leather seat opposite her frankly _massive_ desk with a sigh. Goddamn age and associated calcium loss from bones anyhow.

“We’ve been over this. It’s not conducive for combat.” Rustling of papers punctuated the statement; sometimes Tony swore that Natasha had stacks flown in from the latest technophobic country or whatever just to make his teeth grind. Hell, SI had gone paperless actual _years_ ago. Add to that the fact that no one read that fast, and Tony had been the MIT Bar Bros’ (which was decidedly _not_ a sorority) unchallenged speed-reading champ for all of his time there.

“You could tie it into a ponytail and whip it across your enemies’ faces.” Tony proposed hopefully. “We could call it the Widow’s Sting.”

“The Widow is a spider, not a scorpion.” Natasha pronounced blandly. _Flip. Flip. Rustle._

“Like people care about the scientific accuracy of superhero names – “

 “You may be a sellout, _Iron_ Man, but I have principles.” And it wasn’t even the banter that made his chest rumble in satisfaction, really. Ten years ago, Natasha wouldn’t have absently acquiesced to the Black Widow being a hero, forget drawing comparisons to Iron Man.

It wasn’t the only difference. The Black Widow altered her appearance to suit her guise, hair and all, but Natasha Romanov had begun growing her hair out in the interim, longer and longer each time before shearing it all away. Last, Tony had seen it reach Natasha’s waist, damp from the shower as she combed out the tangles and sunned it in the Mansion gardens, something contented about the curve of her face.

Even now, she wore a well-tailored blazer that seemed to hang comfortably from her shoulders, but not align to her every curve. Her head wasn’t angled to catch the best lighting, the sunlight skimping on the cream of her cheek to glint off her greys instead; a furrow to her brow and the beginning of crow’s feet at the ends of gloriously pale eyes.

She looked beautiful – and it had never seemed to strike him more, not even when she’d glanced up at him through Natalia’s doe-lashes and he’d been a dying bastard leering at her bikini shots.

“Penny for your thoughts?” It had gotten easier to read amusement in those eyes, over the years. Or maybe she’d just gotten better at showing it.

Tony lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “Does it matter? You could probably quote them to me verbatim, and in psychological terms to boot.”

“Ouch.” Natasha dropped her antique little stack of papers, smirk broadening. “I thought we’d decided not to discuss that little fiasco again.”

“Old wounds heal slow.” Tony informed her sagely. He scuffed through his own head of silver, breath falling naturally. “Just…thoughts of passage of time, y’know. Anniversaries. It’s the time of the year for that kinda thing.”

Natasha blinked. “Do not tell me you’ve come here to take up my extremely limited, government-sanctioned time for a _party invite_.”

“It would mean a lot to him.” Tony poked at a loose sheaf on the desk; at least it seemed to be recycled paper. Still, ugh. “Keeps going on and on in that peppy, enthusiastic tone he has, you know the one, about how the famed Black Widow first taught him to fight. Between you and me, I think he’s starting to get worried that the little kiddies think he’s bluffing.”

“Pah.” Natasha said. She sounded a bit like Ebenezer Scrooge, but Russian, it was _delightful._ “If he got any more ‘famed’, he’d be on Mount Rushmore.”

“Between you and me, again, I think he’s worried he’s lost a bit of his mystique.” Tony yawned, covering his mouth a little belatedly. And it was just four in the afternoon too, fuck this shit. “I told him on a mystique scale from Homegrown Hawkeye to Sorceror Surly, he was a–”

“Little Lang?”

“Lousy, actually – but I like your wordplay.”

“I’ll come,” Natasha said, pretending to shuffle through her fake paperwork again. There were probably logical reasons behind the scam too, like ‘for classified eyes only’ and all, but damn if it didn’t feel vindictive.

“Bring presents.” Tony got to his feet, knee cavities perfectly lubricated and uncreaky. Huzzah for small mercies. “Maybe an Itsy Bitsy Spider mug.”

Natasha had the gall to actually roll her eyes at him. And after she’d told him off on five separate occasions for it too, once memorably in front of a supervillain. _Don’t roll your eyes at your captor Tony, that’s terribly rude._ “Obviously.”

Five steps and he was at the door, Agent Sixty Seven’s ruler straight back and hands folded tightly at their spine visible through the reinforced glass; patiently waiting and propped outside like some kind of patently bland office décor. Tony should probably get Natasha a lava lamp at some point. “Don’t stay too late. SHIELD won’t fall without you.” The organisation was like the physical representation of a seventy-year long Jenga game, at this point.

“I know.” Natasha acquiesced. There were lines under her mouth, when she smiled – quiet and open and unpretentious. “I just like it here.”

 

 

_Past:_

 

“I brought presents!” The declamations started the second he stepped through the threshold, obviously. Rhodey had forbidden the use of Suits, capital S, within the Facility unless for training sessions or self-defence, so words were as flashy an entrance as Tony was going to get and he would make the most of it. “It’s two weeks before Halloween and not Christmas, even though I’m wearing red-and-white, which is marvellously subversive of me…”

He trailed off. The cue to cut him off had been ‘white’, or possibly, ‘presents’ – which meant people weren’t paying _attention_ to him. It was only about ten times more annoying than being interrupted.

Not that there was an astonishing wealth of silence greeting his words – to add insult to injury, Tony could discern the faint, peppy tones of some cell phone game playing in the background. The xylophone was unmistakable. So was the blond head bent over a minuscule screen; the only visible body part peeping over the back of the ginormous team couch in an otherwise unoccupied room.

Tony approached cautiously – Wilson had nearly cannibalised him over ruining his Angry Birds Space score, attributing his drop to five hundred and seventeenth place in the leader scoreboards to startlement-via-Stark. Tony was surprised enough people still played Angry Birds Space for there to have been a five hundred and seventeenth place. Regardless, his steps were mincing and dainty-like until he rounded the front of the couch and Steve exonerated him from all future accusations by mumbling out a distracted, ‘hey Tony’.

(Insult. To. Injury.)

“Do you, perchance, need rescuing from that avalanche of fallen candy you’ve been squashed under?” Tony enquired generously. “Or maybe a hand up from that deep pit you tumbled down while running away from temples and surfing subways?”

“It’s a day in the life of sliced bread,” was Steve’s incomprehensible reply; all the while those baby-blues stayed unswerving, thumbs going _tap-tap_ on the screen. Hell, wasn’t super-serum eyesight supposed to be impeccable? Did those pixels need to be in such close vicinity to Steve’s Grecian nose?

“I,” _don’t get that reference,_ was what Tony was about to completely, unironically say – which was inadmissible, so this is what he said instead. “could take that either of two ways, which is that you’ve finally been confronted with the bland, whitebread nature of your existence, in which case good on you, or that you think you’re the coolest thing since _sliced_ bread which I take great umbrage to because have you even seen the _wonder_ that is a kale–”

“Shushush.” Steve raised a hand to presumably bat Tony away, except he kind of grabbed Tony by the lapel and pulled him down instead – which okay, they were friends now, but jeez, _rude._ Tony hit the couch cushions shin first, then turned around on being released to flop down next to Steve, all the while attempting to straighten his blazer with meticulous fingers. God, forties handsiness was weird. Sometimes, Tony tried to imagine Steve and Howard engaging in ‘friendly fisticuffs’ and ended up gagging.

“Look at this.” Steve shoved the phone screen under Tony’s nose, which had a bit of an aquiline thing going on but still wasn’t any more qualified to be in intimate contact with an Apple product. Yeurgh. “It’s a game.”

“I guessed, what with the delightful references to pre-existing games of our time in-taunt. You really should pay more attention to me.” Steve’s response to that was to nearly shove the iPhone up Tony’s nostril, which…no. All body cavity invasions were to be conducted by Stark products only. So he backed up an inch, and looked. Blank turquoise screen, underset by the same bright, peppy music. Lovely.

“Wait.” Steve said, somehow pre-empting Tony’s overpouring of emotion at this piece of art that had just been demonstrated, and jabbed at the screen once. Words began spelling out at the bottom, accompanied by a vocal rendering. _You feel a burning pain in your side, like someone just stabbed you with a knife._

“Dramatic British squawking, very nice. Very John Oliver.” But Steve wasn’t done jabbing. The merry music continued. _It turns out that apparently, someone DID just stab you with a knife._

“This is getting a little morbid.” A cartoon loaf, with a single separated piece of cartoon bread, materialised on screen. _It seems that you’re a piece of bread._

Tony’s eyebrows climbed. Steve jabbed again. _You’re completely fine with this._

Jab. _But just then, a thought hits you:_

Jab. _BREAD IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE AWARE THAT IT’S BREAD BECAUSE IT’S BREAD._

Tony looked up. Steve’s eyes were shining. “This is _incredible._ ”

Steve Rogers, of the I-was-the-weirdest-thing-created-by-science, absently-patted-Butterfingers-on-first-introduction, considered-Tony’s-arc-an-interesting-accessory variety, was apparently arse over dick _floored_ by a game hatched by some Camden Town kid in his attic. A game evidently called ‘a day in the life of sliced bread’.

 _This sure is a crummy situation._ Tony almost choked. _What will you do?_

“Well?” Steve demanded, fairly vibrating with the excitement.

Tony considered his options. Going into cardiac arrest was right out, no matter how close he felt to it in the moment. Playing along it was, then.

Finger outstretched, Tony gave a tentative poke of his own. ‘ _Accept my fate’_ seemed reasonably appropriate.

The game soundly rebuked them for throwing away their life like that, what with being the only self-aware piece of bread in existence on the planet and all. Steve looked positively enthralled.

And so the game, and the day along with it, continued: replete with narrow misses with toasters, going on dates with androgynous people named Alex (Tony didn’t know the romantic prospects of a slice of bread could be so invigorating), living life in the wilderness catching fish with yourself as bait and then wrestling them to death – all for naught, because bread didn’t exactly have a mouth. Or teeth, or a tongue, or a digestive system. What did Alex ever see in you?

Of course, all of the above were hard won victories because more often than not, John Oliver the Second delighted in narrating their horrific deaths in that smarmy voice: from the usual options like becoming literal toast, ranging to the more obscure, like getting quashed by a bowling ball for being an uppity piece of bread. And of course, that time they had an existential crisis so severe that they ate themselves, thereby breaking physics and creating a singularity and ending the universe as they knew it.

But perhaps the only thing stranger than living life as a slice of self-aware bread, was doing it with _Steve._ Because every time they died in some ludicrous way and Tony would shake his shoulders out subtly, preparing to get his ass off the couch – Steve would chortle a little, prod at the screen and start it all over _again –_ and don’t get him wrong. Tony was having fun. Bucketloads of it. It’s just that as they went on and on and _on_ having fun, it got him antsy. Steve seemed to be not expecting him to leave. And, uh. What was up with that?

And him being him, he could have all those thoughts all while debating through their thirty-seventh playthrough. “I say let Alex burn. We’ve saved that prat far too often and for far too little in return.”

“But-” Steve appeared to be wrestling with a moral quandary, possibly considering who he’d become as a person if he endangered the welfare of a fictional character. Or you know, maybe that was just his struggling-to-hold-in-the-pee face. “Fine. You do it.”

And so Alex burned their face against a hot dog cart, and Steve was either twisting with the guilt or really regretting that third soda pop. And then that meanie (Alex, not Steve), turned upon the only bystander, an innocent slice of bread, and vengefully squished it under their boot – because everyone knew that dough was shifty by nature, especially the baked variety; and who hadn’t blamed random pieces of bread for their misfortune now and then?

John Oliver couldn’t seem to contain his glee. _You can’t help but realise…you sort of deserved it though. I guess being a jerk just doesn’t work out sometimes._

“Punk.” Tony muttered, a little huffily. You know what he needed to do? He needed to buy out this stupid game and pay off the stupid millennial who’d developed it and _make_ Alex – no, nope. This was an excessive reaction. He was excessing. Remember Pepper. He was zen. Zen was him. The game music wasn’t playing anymore, why was the stupid, peppy game music not playing anymore, Steeeeeeve–

“Steve?”

Steve blinked a couple times, raising his– “Oh god what happened to your face.”

Another blink, though it did nothing to fix whatever calamity had befallen Steve’s face in the brief seconds that Tony had been contemplating hostile takeovers. It was like someone had…switched off a light behind those eyes, blue sheen dulled where they had been alight with excitement not even a minute ago. His lips had thinned, his jaw tensed, and he kept blinking compulsively – like the world was blurring in front of him and this was the only way he had left to centre himself.

“Sorry.” A quick, perfunctory curve of the lips, playing at a smile. Then back to a featureless canvas, tone calm and inscrutable to match. “Got lost in thought, for a minute.”

Tony stared on. It was like watching a picture fading back to greyscale. It was dangerously like déjà vu. How did he ever used to believe that _this_ was what Steve always looked like? “Thoughts of what, dying babies?”

A tic in the jaw, like a glitch had occurred in the Stoic Face ™ that Steve was currently exhibiting. “Not like – you just…reminded me of someone, that’s all.”

Oh. Oh shit. “Neutrino, DeForest Kelley, Capsicle. There, similarity gone.” And then, because no one could blame him for never trying, regardless of how shitty _that_ always went, “Don’t fret about it, big guy. It’ll get better, you just need more time.”

Steve…stilled, there was no better word for it. Even the blinking had stopped. There was always something in his features reminiscent of classical statues, but now he looked more granite than marble – solid and brittle, warmth leeched out of his skin, his irises.

“It was…cold, that day.” The words came like heavy boulders, slow and bleak and remembering. Steve’s eyes didn’t flicker. “The kind that bites at your toes, turns the sheets to ice. The snow wasn’t pretty – grit and slush, boot heels slick with it.”

Tony waited, panic blearily waking to life somewhere at the back of his head. For a pop culture reference maybe, niftily materialising in his mind to guide this conversation to a safer direction, something blasé and glib and ever-so-slightly-discouraging to those soft, lowly spoken words.

His throat was dry. Nothing came.

“Dum-Dum was chewing on his third stale cigar of the day, said it kept him awake. Gabe kept crowding him, tryna get ‘warmth’ from the lit cig, but everyone knew he just liked the smell. Reminded him of summers at Tampa.” There was the smallest smile whispering at the corners of Steve’s lips, rawer than if he’d broken apart and wept.  “Buck was convinced the mission was my way of getting back at him for all our Coney Island trips, but I wouldn’t’ve picked these odds. Nine-car steamliner, hurtling down a mountain railroad at a hundred miles an hour. Ten second window.” Tony had never heard numbers…hurt, like this. They were bluntly cut syllables, dulled like they’d been repeated within the privacy of a mind stuck in rut a thousand times, their finality inescapable. “Ninety foot gorge.”

“They were better prepared for us than we thought. Rogue Hydra weapon blew a hole in the train, Bucky got blasted out.” A sharp breath, a contracted chest, like all the oxygen in the world wasn’t enough. “He hung on, for a bit. ‘Bout three and a half seconds. I can…I could hear his scream echoing as he fell.”  

_Steve…_

“There was a bombed out bar, half a mile out from our base at the time.” Steve’s jaw barely moved as he spoke, the straight lines of it firming up like this was all just like any other setback. Set your jaw tight and push through, right? Tony wanted to break those lines on his knuckles, soothe it with warmed breath. “They hadn’t taken the alcohol when they ran, and I helped myself…after. Whiskey, mostly. Three bottles. Calvert – Buck and I’d never been able to afford it, but we used to see the ads in the paper – men lounging in a boat, fishing with full tumblers in hand, while a longnose shark jumped in the background.”

_And they call nostalgia a good thing._

The torturous half-curve reappeared, a smile that didn’t know what else to do. “An hour in, Peg came after me. Her gloves didn’t fit well, she was pulling ‘em off the second she walked in.” Steve was staring into the distance, hazy blue drawing a picture he knew so well. “Wearing her old coat too – the third button sat wonky, and you could see the fraying threads if you looked real close. It was how I knew she’d dressed in a hurry – Peggy always looked impeccable.”

Recited like it had happened just yesterday, because it may as well have. Because everything may as well have. Oh god.

“She told me…she told me I needed to allow Bucky the dignity of his choice.” So fond, despite it all. Desperately fond. “Sometimes I wonder if she used to tell herself that, after the plane went down.”

Finally, finally an exhale. Steve raised his eyes, stopped smiling. “Time doesn’t help, Tony. Forgetting does.”

He didn’t need to say the rest out loud. Tony stared back all too comprehending, something close to horror shading his thoughts and eyes. _And Captain America…you._

_Can’t._

Super soldier fucking memory indeed.

“Isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.” That was…that was his voice. That was Tony’s voice, echoing strangely in the silence that followed, and he should have bloody seen this coming. All that remained was to hold on to the rails and wait for the punchline – wait for Steve’s eyes to grow colder at the mockery made of him. All that exited, however, was a solitary word. “Forgetting.”

Steve didn’t scoff. Didn’t grit his teeth, didn’t sharply retort that Tony understood nothing, because Tony definitely understood absolutely nothing – but Tony didn’t stop talking, croaky and jarring in the wake of Steve’s quiet remembrances. “Forgetting is…indiscriminate. It doesn’t pick or choose. Just takes.”

_Whiskey, mostly. Three bottles._

Tony swallowed. It was like a haze was setting over his vision, limbs growing heavy – like he’d been submerged, but instead of murky green-blue all around him, there was the faintest tint of amber. “You wanna forget the bad stuff, and you do. It takes all that stuff away, and then a little bit more. The bad, the good, the mundane. Till all that’s left is…” chunks of vomit hitting the white ceramic of a toilet seat. Liquor-born sweat that stunk to the lowest reaches of hell. An empty bottle.

Tony breathed, freer than he used to. Sometimes, the absence of the arc, that heavy weight, still stunned him. “If remembering the bad means I can keep the better – I’m okay with that trade.”

Steve looked at him. Seconds passed, long and slowly drawn out. His eyes seemed lost. “But it’s the good parts that hurt.”

 _I know darling._ His lips curled, ironic with a touch of truth. “Something is better than nothing.”

(Howard used to hate that saying).

No matter how hard it was to convince yourself that heartburning, world-destroying agony was better than the nothingness. It led you nowhere, numbness assembling in layers, emotional calluses thickening until nothing could get through. Not joy, not sorrow, not life and its associated bittersweetness.

“D’you need me to say more? ‘Cause I think I might’ve just given myself an ulcer with the deep and penetrating wisdom.”

Ah, the inappropriate joke reflex. Nice to see you finally kick in.

A little sound – more of a wet exhale than an actual laugh, but when Steve looked back up again, his eyes were blue in exactly the right kinda way. The surge of pride flooding through Tony’s bloodstream in response to that was…a little staggering, honestly.

“Tony.” His tone wasn’t cheery – Tony wasn’t a miracle worker – but the irrepressible fondness in Steve’s voice, etching out Peggy’s image from picture-perfect memory, had remained. Strange. “You’re smarter than you give yourself credit for.”

Tony nudged the shoulder next to his, gently. Not quite forties-style handsy comfort, but it would do in a pinch. His mouth quirked up, a softened version of the smirks he doled out all too easily. “You _are_ aware you’re saying that to a self-proclaimed genius. Hell, weren’t you the target of that particularly sassy proclamation?”

Steve wasn’t following the script, the traditional wry half-grin replaced by something warm, yet serious. His gaze was steadfast. “Genius has nothing to do with it.”

 

 

_Present:_

 

For all of his vendettas against ancient implements, there was something ineffably peaceful about the sound of pencil scratching against paper, soft and rhythmic. It was practically Tony’s lullaby at this point – head sinking into goosedown, closed eyelids limned orange with the afternoon sun, and the sound of Steve labouring patiently at his artist’s pad; a source of steady warmth at Tony’s side. A steady _scritch-scritch_ , amplified and echoing through the solidity of the pillow pressed under Tony’s ear, and he’d breathe deeper and drift off to sleep.

(Fond thoughts of afternoon naps. Damn, he really had become an old man.)

Sometimes he’d raise his head, elbow propped and chin resting on his knuckles, watching the rises and swoops of the pencil with dream-heavy eyes. It was hypnotising, watching that hand deftly guide the graphite in seemingly random motions, blind to the design that was emerging on the paper in the background. It seemed almost unimportant; until those fingers lifted and Tony’s eyes cleared, like the image had suddenly come into focus and revealed itself to be a masterpiece of chiaroscuro.

There was no cross-hatching in the drawing taking shape before his eyes now; no delicate play of light and shade, no licking of the little finger and subsequent smudging and blending of the charcoal. But it wasn’t any less mesmerising, for all that its beauty arose from the little scribbled figures around the straight lines instead of elaborate shading, the angles between – hell, it was practically geni–

“You planning on standing there all afternoon like a creeper, Tones?”

Tony’s lips quirked without his permission. Three strides and he was looming over the back of the chair his best friend was comfortably cossetted in, casting a shadow over his shoulder and the streamlined design that was emerging on the drafting pad. “You know, I never thought I’d say this to any man except Steve – but your cans are positively glorious, pooh bear.”

“Can _ards._ Can _ards._ ” Came back on autopilot, Rhodey’s fingers moving unceasingly over the page. “It’s _one_ less syllable and hardly a recognizable, forget an appropriate nickname – also get the hell out of my light.”

Tony grinned outright, moving away from his spot behind Rhodey’s shoulder to turn the corner of the table, and promptly squat his butt atop it, a foot away from the drafting pad. Rhodey’s brows climbed, but he said nothing. Tony beamed, swinging his legs, a dignified man of sixty five. “My nicknames are always appropriate, pumpkin patch. Can _ards_ are projections attached to the main body of the aircraft ahead of the main wing – ergo, cans – and you’re all soft and squishy on the inside like a particular orange vegeta– hey, why didn’t you use elevons in this?”

Rhodey inhaled deeply. Tony would feel _so_ betrayed if he was praying for strength right now, the blaspheming bastard. “Because the canards and the ailerons perform the same function together, as you very well know–

“But they are _two_ things, and elevons are one, and two things are more than one thing and more things lead to more drag–

“Which I already know, since I actually have attended Aircraft Design 101 and even flown a plane, believe it or not.” Rhodey finished off the outline of his aileron with a pointed stroke. “Also what have I said about backseat designing before, Tones?”

“That I shouldn’t do it?” Tony hazarded.

“Atta boy.” Rhodey pronounced sarcastically. His fingers outstretched for an eraser lying just beyond the pad, shoulder straining and back stiff and unbent. Tony bumped it over with a brush of his elbow, and Rhodey’s chin dipped in wordless thanks. “ ‘Sides, if you’re itching at the balls to design this much, you shouldn’t have dropped all those military contracts, hmm?”

“Oh, they’re gonna come begging at my heels soon anyway.” Tony returned breezily. “With _that_ kind of wing aspect ratio, your plane’s pretty much a bumbling dragonfly against zippy hummingbirds with _far_ more maneouvreabili–”

“Tony.” Came the response, and Tony snapped his mouth shut immediately because that tone meant Rhodey was trying to _concentrate._

The sound of graphite over paper resumed – Rhodey patiently etching out line after line, mechanical pencil light in his grasp; Tony watching along, absolutely absorbed. Apart from fleeting thoughts about how impossible this would have been for him ten years ago, his attention barely wavered. He didn’t remember the last time he’d physically completed a design – MIT, maybe. Rhodey’s style had barely changed since then: he was all about the clean strokes, well-defined boundaries. Used an eraser whenever there was a scribble out of place, scrupulously neat as ever, but never too much as to wear down the paper itself.

Tony, by contrast, was all about sketching and resketching over the same figure, models A through F scrawled over each other, somehow coalescing into one whole coherent to Stark eyes alone. Rhodey sketched out broad skeletons, defined each major part before fixating on the details – while Tony just ran from specifics alone, building upwards and outwards till the details sort of tumbled into critical mass, somehow forming a bigger picture. Yet, they worked. Both of them.

Ten minutes elapsed before Rhodey straightened up again, having carefully erased the sweep of his wings to draw them more sharply angled to the fuselage. “What do you think?”

“It’s stunning.” Tony said unthinkingly; and fuck backseat designing and banter and Rhodey’s smug little smirk anyhow, because it _was._ “It’s…it’s unconventional, but simplistic and…it’s gonna fly, Rhodes.”

“You bet your ass it is.” Rhodey grinned, speckled skin of his jaw creasing into thousands of tiny lines. “Damn, you should’ve seen the project before I came on. The previous guy put the engines in line with the centre of mass, to avoid asymmetrical torque, which worked well enough until one of the engines went boom at high latitude–”

Tony groaned. “And the bird went into flat spin and made straight for the ground.”

“Latitudinal asymmetric thrust, ladies and gentlemen. It’s a thing.” Rhodey did the pencil-twirl thingy between his index and thumb – Tony had never been able to manage it himself, and it made him terrifically jealous. “The military never did understand how to rope SI back into a contract. Instead of generals with bristling moustaches and weak-ass intimidation, they should have just chucked their inept designs at you and you’d have been all over that with a red pen out of sheer frustration.”

“Well they’ve got you now, huh hotshot?” Tony wriggled in place a little; his butt was starting to go numb. The table creaked ominously, Rhodey shooting him a brief warning look before lowering his head to the design again. “Ex-Air Force, uses full names and proper designations for everything. It’s Colonel Jessup’s wet dream.”

Rhodey snorted. “How old is that movie now, forty years?” His hand was still moving unerringly over the page: long, straight strokes. “And you know it isn’t just that. They give me ten requirements, I’ll give them…five extra features on top of that, max. Someone asks _you_ for a helicopter, you’ll give them a reactor-powered rocketship capable of flying through space and time. Your designs are like something out of Star Trek, Tony – and most people can’t fly with fifteen displays spitting information at them, y’know?”

Tony scowled. He didn’t appreciate the _aspersions_ being cast on his design capabilities, thank you very much. “You could.”

“Well I’m incredible, aren’t I?” Rhodey returned nonchalantly – then fell silent. The afternoon sun gleamed off the steel lines of his Stark braces, running sleekly up his spine to mid thorax and curving over his pelvis. The struts connecting to his knees were thinner, thigh muscles pressing firm and well-defined against the unyielding metal. Rhodey never missed a day of physio.

_I miss flying with you._

Tony exhaled. Waited for the tightness at the base of his throat to pass, before the words crept past his lips, quiet and steadying. “I wouldn’t have pictured you doing this…not twenty years ago.” _But it suits you._

The expected ‘ _I know’_ , never came. “It’s one of the pitfalls of being a larger-than-life hero: no one notices your big brain.” Rhodey murmured back, and Tony’s next exhale was more delighted laugh than anything else. God, just. _Rhodey._

The man in question lifted his chin, afternoon gold sliding over liver-spotted, still glossy skin. His dark eyes appeared russet in this light, something sure and implacable in that gaze. He was smiling. “I don’t need to leave the ground to fly, Tony.”

“I know.” Tony felt his own lips curve, higher and higher still. Rhodey matched him inch for inch, bright and strong. Damn, how he loved this man.

“And yes, I’m coming for the goddamned anniversary dinner.” Rhodey huffed, perhaps a touch more dramatically than was called for, in Tony’s esteemed opinion. “We’re not living in the times of her majesty Queen Victoria and you do _not_ need to go around making house calls to nag us into attending your little social event.”

“See, you say that,” Tony began, light and unconcerned, the last couple of minutes not unforgotten but…laid to rest for now, perhaps. “but I have this sneaking suspicion that Carol’s off gallivanting on Xandar at this very moment, yes?”

“Gallivanting…working her ass off…such synonymous phrases, really.” Rhodey smiled, sarcasm doled out in perfectly measured helpings. “Not like she isn’t the second highest ranked officer in the Nova Corps and has a _responsibility_ or anything–”

“Yes yes, she’s beauty and grace and makes you pop duty-boners,” Tony waved his hand distractedly, “actually wait, coming back to the boners – please tell me you do it in the uniforms.”

Rhodey surveyed him like he was disappointed, and Tony was a bit of a moron. “Of course we do it in the uniforms.”

 _Guh_. Tony flapped his hand again, but this time to fan himself a little. “You think Carol would let me borrow hers? I have this hunch that Steve wants to see me in military fancy dress, but won’t raise the topic for fear of Disrespecting the Nation.”

“Take it up with her.” Was Rhodey’s lacklustre response, head craning to the side to squint at the lines on the page as if that would make a jot of a difference. It was a pencil drawing, not a freaking kaleidoscope.

But Tony had a guest list to go through. “And the Big Flighty Giant?”

“Lhasa, last I heard.” Rhodey scrunched up his eyes, peering at the pad over a flared nose because of course that was a foolproof way to improve one’s eyesight and ability to spot design errors. “And it’s been four hundred and sixteen days since the last code green, so you might wanna find a new, soft-and-squishy-human nickname.”

Wellll, Bruce was _always_ soft and squishy, green or not; but that wasn’t the important bit here. “Four hundred and sixteen? Isn’t that the longest we’ve gone so far?”

“Four hundred and seventeen if you want to count today – but yep.” Rhodey’s eyes were still fixated on his precious baby designs, but there was something softly pleased about that tone nonetheless. “The closest we came to a code green was when some space surfer dudes slipped past the Guardians – the Avengers were ready and waiting topside, but SHIELD Helicarriers showed up outta nowhere and shot them out of the sky before they could even make planetfall.”

Oh, Natasha. “You have any wreckage for me to look at?”

“America punched it into gnarly space dust. I’m sorry.” And Rhodey sounded genuinely apologetic too. “I believe her justification was, ‘we can’t let Dr Banner cut his CERN trip short just because Extraterrestrial Point Break couldn’t keep to their own lane’.”

Ah, a girl after Tony’s own heart. And in more ways than one – Bruce’s wan, haunted face loomed in his memory, Harlem and Johannesburg and all the ugliness that came before and after. _So you're saying that the Hulk... the other guy... saved my life? That's nice. It's a nice sentiment. Saved it for what?_ For saving the world, apparently. And Bruce did it again and again and _again_ , ripping his consciousness apart, control wrenched from his hands–

–but not anymore. Maybe it was decades too late, but he had people to step in for him now, people who’d shed blood and heart and sinew so Bruce could live his life for himself. The thought made Tony’s breath stick in his throat, the warmth that had been gently stirring in his belly since the beginning of this conversation expanding into something bright and living. “Who’d have thought they’d get so protective of our gentle giant.”

Rhodey’s lips curved, soft and faintly preoccupied. “Pretty sure the protectiveness is over the squishy Bruce-human, but yeah.”

Tony propped his palms on the flat of the table and pushed himself off, landing on his heels with the smallest of winces. The room was lit gold, dust motes shimmering in the setting sun. He was warm from forehead to toe, and the world looked flawless. “Good motivation for the kids, huh.”

Rhodey shrugged, shoulders rising up and falling unassumingly. “Good motivation for all of us.”

Tony succumbed – walking back over to the chair Rhodey hadn’t moved from and propping his arms on the wooden back, chin sinking into the warm divot between Rhodey’s nape and shoulder. Snuffled into the cotton of his shirt a little, nose full of citrus fabric softener, and eyes fluttering open to peer at the airplane design from this vantage. Tony’s words were mumbled, lips puffing moist breath against the warm, cotton-covered skin. “We’ve done pretty well for ourselves, haven’t we?”

Rhodey tilted his head to the right, bopping the side of Tony’s forehead with his own, almost absent minded. “Yeah. Yeah, we have.”

  

 

_Past:_

 

It was a constant _rat-a-tat_ against his skull, a marching beat of rain hitting the helmet like a chorus of white noise. Monsoon green stretched below him in an unending expanse, threatening grey above – and he flew towards the horizon, unfeeling of the downpour that battered against the suit. Ever so often thunder would crack, close enough to make his speakers rattle with the feedback, the power level in the suit spiking with every roar.

He usually tried not to fly in the rain – friction wasn’t a concern like with cars on the road and the suit was waterproof, but he called it a preference and left it at that. If past, not-quite-related experiences moulded his preferences, it was none of his concern. Half the joy of flying was in the view anyhow and the rain smeared that; fog oftentimes thickening the wet air several miles above ground, shutting out the sun and stars. The wind that playfully batted against his shoulders while he sliced through the atmosphere turned demonic, gale-like force strong enough to sometimes twist him awry from his course. The world grew greyer, darker – everything running in on itself to turn into a sopping, indistinguishable mass of water and nothingness.

He didn’t have much choice now. Satellites had detected the entry of a foreign object into the Earth’s atmosphere eight hours ago, and it took five of those goddamn hours before fuzzy pictures emerged – oblong, disk like structures hovering over a rice field in Vietnam. They disappeared twenty minutes later, but the damage was already done: a panicking government reluctant to deploy an airforce that still included craft from the Cold War era, unsurprisingly outweighing the terror of the Avengers swooping in and reducing everything to flame and rubble. Hell, at least the Avengers were still human. Sort of.

So Tony had finally been sent in, replete with UN sanctions, the fastest of the lot. The estimated danger was minimum, what with the David Copperfield vanishing act, but the Iron Legion was on standby in twenty minutes in case the situation went south. The location was a mere mile away at this point, and all readings approached normal, apart from a slight spike in methane which was probably produced by all the paddy–

Tony slowed to a stop.

It had the effect of straightening him up, hovering feet above the ground; something about seeing things from the right side of gravity resolving the view into high definition from the rain-washed swathe it had been. The sky heaved with rolling clouds, stretching over fields that ran every which way; slender, hunter-green leaf blades emerging from pools of flooded land, mud-flecked inflorescences drooping downwards to touch the water. There were no signs of alien activity, nothing out of the way, not even a crop circle, except–

Except the man in the dark leather suit standing in the field, face lifted to the sky.

Tony cut the repulsors. He landed on his feet with a squelch, boots sinking through the silt and water lapping at his ankle guards. The absence of the steady whine in his ears made the rain echo louder. _Rat-a-tat-tat._

“This isn’t an emergency.”

Steve pressed his lips together, bloodless in the rain. His hair was plastered to his skull, darkened and ashy, water scoring rivulets down gaunt cheeks. Sparse stubble stood out on a tight jaw, murky over paper-white skin, as did sunken eye sockets. He didn’t respond.

Tony could feel the pressure between his teeth, at the back of his jaw – hard enough to splinter. “The pact was, only during an emergen–”

“I know.” Nothing hoarse about that tone. Just quiet – quiet enough that Tony could barely see Steve’s lips move. His eyes looked pallid in this lighting, washed out against this world of green and brown and grey.

 _There are people watching._ Except Steve wasn’t stupid and they probably weren’t, were they – courtesy of a certain Wakandan royal. The man had probably spilled the beans the second he was out of the UN meeting; the Last American Hero and his buds were ensconced right in his backyard, after all. Wakanda: home of the tech-savvy and asylum for the vigilante.

The water sloshed against his calves as he moved, mud and grime sticking under the grooves of the armour plates as they flexed and released. Rice stalks squelched under his heel, even as he tread past that leather-clad shoulder, eyes affixed straight ahead. Stride and stride and stride, unfeeling of the water that trickled steadily into the seams of his chestplate, ran past the unyielding metal jaw, left tracks down the glass of his reactor casing.

There was a dilapidated shelter just before the irrigation drain, on the far end of the field, barely more than four bamboo sticks entrenched in the mud with a pile of hay slopped atop with a prayer to high heaven. It was this structure that Tony made for, slow and inexorable. When he finally ducked his head and stepped through, the clamorous beat of rain against gold-titanium faded to a muted roar. He turned.

Steve faced him, not even a full yard away, both dark and colourless against Mekong’s turbulent skies. Tony hadn’t heard his following footsteps, though he must have followed. He just stood, unspeaking, while water scored past and bleached the lines of a face, a profile that just seemed…bleak. Apathetic.

 _Sure, stand there in the rain agonising over your self-absorbed man pain._ Tony breathed, slow and controlled. None of those words were allowed. None. He didn’t have to give away a single thing he didn’t have to– _I liked you better when you said you knew men worth ten of me. At least you were being honest._

But that was it, wasn’t it. Honesty was a privilege; Tony had been schooled in that fact by now.

“Are you going to say anything?”

Steve’s lips flickered soundlessly. His eyes were distant, fixed somewhere on the ditch beyond the shelter. Then, barely a rasp: “Are you going to listen?”

 _You fucking hypocrite_ – Tony pulled a breath forcibly, sharp enough to sting his lungs. _You fucking_ – but Steve was looking at him now, gaze unswerving, face drawn and eyes pale; looking like he didn’t need Tony to verbalise his honesty, like he could read Tony’s rage off the impassive glint of a blood-and-gold helmet. And that was what prompted his next response, maybe– that it didn’t sound like a taunt, or an accusation, that it sounded like Steve was genuinely _asking_. Would he listen? Deserving or no, privilege or no, would he…

“Depends.” The voice modulator rendered his tone emotionless. “Will it be honest?”

Too small to be a flinch, too expressive to be anything else. Tony watched Steve’s shoulders tighten, like he was bracing himself, “Did you read my–”

“What? List of ill-rehearsed platitudes?” Tony barked a laugh, razor-edged and humourless. It emerged as a jarring crack of dissonance over Iron Man’s speakers. “ _Locks can be replaced – but maybe they shouldn’t_. Pearls of wisdom, truly. Handwritten too; very personal, nice touch.”

Water streamed down those shoulders, more bent than broad, now; the downpour hitting the leather in a relentless beatdown. Steve didn’t raise his head.

“That letter may have been many things, Rogers. Maybe even truthful.” And he could hear himself from a distance, cold and remote, even impassive. “But you didn’t write a single fucking honest word.”

Steve said nothing.

And the silence stuck, thick as the humidity that stifled the air, interrupted only by the torrents that battered the earth. Moments passed by, heavy and oppressive, strung tighter and tighter as they stretched longer and longer. Maybe this was the end. Not a bang, or even a whimper. Just a throttling silence, too vast to ever be bridged. The resentment of words left unspoken sliced deep, but this was a curious kind of pain all on its own – or perhaps the feeling that followed pain. Drained, hollow listlessness. Two people who had nothing left to say to each othe–

A rustle.

Steve was moving – achingly, achingly slow, mincing steps pushing through the sludge that caked his feet. The pungent scent of wet leather suffused the shelter, acrid even through the suit’s filters, damp-thick in Tony’s nostrils. He wanted to sneeze. He wanted to stop breathing.

The shelter wasn’t very big. The suit wouldn’t let him…feel things. Like the dank warmth wafting off a posthuman body, even with three inches between their shoulders. The suit was designed that way – a single degree of separation between him and the world. Sometimes, that was essential to survival. He had never been more grateful.

At the periphery of his vision, he could see Steve pull wet strands back from his forehead; colourless droplets snaking down uncaring fingers. A bug crawled across the rim of his collar – his fingers stilled, then dropped down to his side without flicking the critter away. The critter crawled on.

“I want.” Steve said, then pressed his lips closed. Thinner, more ragged, than Tony remembered them to be. It was irrelevant. “I. I don’t know what it’s like, I think, to do something I don’t want.”

He stared ahead, gaze affixed on the distance like Tony’s was, had to be. Appropriate, perhaps. Two sightlines reaching for a common goal, forever parallel, never meeting. “Running errands for Mrs Hosemann down the street, even though she could probably lift the washing more easily than I could. Making breakfast for Ma before her five am shift at the hospital, every morning. Facing down Mikey and his thugs in the alleys. Basic training in the Army. It wasn’t about whether it was unpleasant, or…scary, or difficult. Sometimes it was all three. I _wanted_ to do all those things, nonetheless. So I did ‘em.”

“But I was never forced to it. Never bent my will.” Steve smiled, as humourless as any smile Tony might have facsimiled over the last few months. “Bu– people used to say I had strong principles. And maybe my wants were less about…self-preservation, or winning a big buck, or…but they were still _my_ wants. And damned be the person who got in between. So when you came down to it, I was–am,” Steve corrected, unamusedly scrupulous, eyes distant on the high heavens. “Selfish. For a given value of selfishness.”

“And that value’s been…expanding, to say the least. Since I woke up in this century, since I numbed myself to this world.” The words dropped like they were perfunctory, like they’d been stored up for a while, for days and months and years – but there was no relief, no fanfare. “Since I thought trading my past for people’s future was a fair bargain.” A flash of feeling, there and gone in Steve’s eyes. “It’s been a steady climb…but this isn’t about that. Though I wish a million times over that it was.”     

“This isn’t the epiphany.” Steve said, and there was nothing wishful about those words. “This isn’t the big realisation, followed by the big apology. Because if it were… you wouldn’t still be here. I wouldn’t ask you to listen. I’d respect that you have nothing more to say, and nothing more to listen to.” A deep, rattling breath. Like his chest had been hollowed inside out. “I would let you go.”

A spike of defensiveness – _you don’t have the authority to_ **_let_ ** _me, to keep –_ except that ran itself out before it even fully started, sputtered out to death under the onslaught of the rain. _Let you go-_ it didn’t sound physical, as much as Tony strained to jump to the worst conclusions. It sounded…wistful. Pained.

“So I could say I’ve been selfish and that I regret it – but this is just more of the same. More selfishness. What I…” Steve’s mouth moved soundlessly, helplessly, seconds on end. “..want. And I want to. I just want to _–_ ”

“What.” Tony couldn’t recognise his voice.

“Talk.” And it was like the façade was crumbling, the granite that made up those strong lines, that straight nose, that inexorable jaw; wavering and disintegrating before his eyes. “When you went on about blueberries and Walt Whitman, robots and shields, heroes and responsibility. I wanted to talk from the very beginning, till the very end – and the more I wanted, the more I couldn’t, even when I should have. And now there are…there are…”

A very distant part of Tony’s head noted that Captain America was stumbling on his words – but he’d left Tony the shield, and maybe with it the eloquence. The artifice. Or maybe it was the other way round, and he’d taken the freedom to flounder instead – to trip over and pick himself back up, to let his voice thicken in powerless emotion.

“There are aliens in the sky. Just like you said there’d be.” Steve smiled, if you could call a fissure on that face a smile, and stared sightlessly at the skies. “And maybe this is what being a futurist feels like – but I can see it so clearly, you know? You soaring off to save the world, while we’re stirring from our beds. Watching. Watching.”

A creak, as gloved fingers dug forcefully into hard leather, knuckles pressing at the seams. “And the world would be saved, and the world would celebrate. And I’d be left here, still wanting. Talking. To empty air, to a stone in the ground.” A crack of thunder in the distance. “To a patch of earth six feet under.”

“And I c– I just– I _can’t_ , Tony.” And Steve finally, finally turned his head, eye contact established unblinkingly; and that was why, he hadn’t been blinking, that was why his eyes were red-rimmed and blue irises glassy, that had to be…had to be it.. “I can’t go on like this. I can’t stand still, even though I should. Can’t stay quiet, even if I must. Can’t pretend I have absolutely nothing to say to you, because…this isn’t an emergency. This isn’t an emergency, and yet I know me, and I know you, and when the next emergency comes around, what’ll be left of us is me talking – apologising _–_ to a body on a slab. And I can’t do that.”

The rain had gotten into his eyes. Tony could feel it – creeping hot and stinging past his lids, clotting his lashes and wrenching loose: a funerary crawl over the aged landscape of his cheeks. Like every trail carved new lines, new scars and canyons for a face ravaged by the decades. The rain had gotten into his eyes, even though he stood motionless under dank heather, even as he blinked – shielded, by a hero’s helmet.

He cleared his throat; a minuscule sound that didn’t leave the confines of the suit. Neither did the trembling. It would take time, to work his way back to honesty.

(time was a luxury they never had, the conference room, the airport, the bunker– )

Tony breathed, long and quiet. “I’m listening.”

 

 

_Present:_

 

“I’m looking for the groom. Have you seen him?”

The server opened his mouth, and shut it again. Hitched his tray of Captain America themed canapes a little higher, like readying himself to fling it into Tony’s face at the slightest hint of danger. “Uh. This is an anniversary party?”

“Being the organiser _slaving_ after this shindig for ages – I am aware.” Tony parsed out a smile, perilously polite. “The groom?”

The server blinked wide eyes. “I think I saw him near the fajitas?”

“Brilliant, of course you did.” Tony spun around on his heels, ignoring the flinch and subsequent wobble the server and his tray executed. The fajita table was on the far end of the hall, and it took fifteen whole minutes of ducking and weaving (okay fine, the crowds parted before him a la Moses-and-the-Red-Sea, but it still took fifteen darn minutes) to find the man of the hour and creep up behind him. Tony crossed his arms, realised it rendered him incapable of actually drawing said man’s attention, uncrossed them again and tapped the guy on his shoulder, if a bit imperiously.

“You were supposed to be here an hour ago.”

It was still a jolt to the brain, a brief shot of cognitive dissonance on watching him turn – that square jaw, more well-shaved than baby-smooth, a head of hair that had truly outgrown its teenaged-mop phase, the black lines of a suit that _didn’t_ look loosely propped on a wire hanger, but rather like it…fit. Those eyes would always remain the same though – idealistic spark and impossible kindness twinned in dark irises.

Nevertheless, Peter Parker remained a sneaky bastard who wouldn’t answer a straight accusation. Instead, his thin brows went winging to his hairline, eyes flitting up and down Tony’s frame dubiously. “You look…shiny.”

(Agh, the voice shitted him the most. Tony missed that reedy, high-pitched wonder of a larynx, dammit.)

“Needless to say, if tomorrow’s headlines are going to be _Unmarried silver fox presides over protégé’s ten-year anniversary_ , you bet your wedded ass I’m gonna lean into it.” Tony smoothed down the lapels of his own three-piece – dove gray, just a few shades lighter than his hair, with silver pinstripes. Shiny was one word for it. Awesome was another.

“You need to stop saying that.” Peter turned back to his little paper plate boasting a fajita tower of over six inches, easy. Hell, to have a metabolism like _that._ The last time Tony had indulged in Mexican, he’d been toilet-ridden with gastro for over a week. “Last time MJ misheard you and now she keeps threatening to weld my ass shut.”

Ah, those innocent days when Peter would rather spontaneously combust than use the a-word in front of ‘Mr Stark’. Tony pinched a scrap of cheese from Peter’s plate, the latter barely blinking an eye. “Well, who told you to enter holy matrimony at twenty-one, then?”

Peter stared at him flatly. “You did.”

“Damn right I did.” Tony affirmed with pride, scarfing down the cheese in a single gulp. Mm, cotija. “And still no grandkids for Uncle Tony.”

“Genealogically, that’s an impossibility.” Ooh, big word – though there was a tiny bean-scented burp between syllables three and four. Peter cleared his throat, faintly pink.

There was another tempting little cheesy strip hanging out the bottom fajita, Tony’s fingers were positively itching. To cheese or not to cheese? Gah, who cared, you only lived an average of four times, being a caped crusader. And so through a mouthful of snatched dairy and more than a little beef: “The main thing, and don’t you think I haven’t noticed you avoiding it with your ten-dollar words – you were supposed to be here an hour ago.”

“There was a call to Assemble.” Peter replied, perfectly straight faced.

Tony’s eyes narrowed, even as he proceeded to lick up the grease lingering around his fingernails. “I didn’t hear of it.”

“Not sure if they still keep you in the know, but I tend to do the calling these days.” The swagger was nowhere near Stark levels, but unmistakeably present. It was brilliant.

“Was that an ‘old, useless relic’ dig?” Tony approximated a glare to the best of his ability. “And after all I did for you when you were a midget.”

“Nothing like being called ‘Underoos’ to legitimise your identity as a superhero.” Peter was demolishing the tower faster than it had piled up, till only draggly, soggy bits of vegetable remained.

“Fine. I suppose I’ll just have to ask Kamala about this mysterious call to arms–”

“Fine, I misplaced my cufflinks, _jeez_.” Well-tailored as they were, Peter’s sleeves still flapped with his gesturing, aforementioned cufflinks glinting under the light – blood-red hour glass shapes embossed on plain obsidian circles. “Just because she hangs on your every word with all the fangirling and ‘Mr Stark’s–”

“Golly gee, I wonder who that reminds me of–”

“ _Tony_.” Mock frustrated as the tone was, Peter was still grinning. Tony could feel his heart swell a million sizes.

Peter commenced tugging his sleeves back over his wrists, straightening them conscientiously, fingers lingering absently on the smoothed curve of the cufflinks. “Speaking of – did Nat say she was coming?”

“With an Itsy Bitsy Spider mug, no less.” Tony cast a last, disconsolate look at the fajita table and turned away. “Also still can’t believe she lets you call her that.”

“Just spider solidarity.” Peter positively beamed, and Tony could have recited the next words in his sleep because it had to be the fifty thousand and seven hundredth time he’d heard them, “She first taught me how to–”

“Fight, I know. What with all the positive word-of-mouth, the Black Widow’s lessons on _‘Strangling: Why use fingers when you’ve got a perfectly serviceable pair of thighs’_ have been overbooked for the past decade.”

“Not that I don’t mentally note it down every time you say stuff like that–” Peter straightened up noticeably, smile broadening till it went from charming to no-one-panic-but-we’ve-got-a-DEFCON-5, “but I’m going to have to ask you to save it for the toast. Which you’re making right now.”

“Why do I have to–”

“Because I’d rather not explain to my wife that I was over an hour late to my ten-year anniversary party looking for my lucky Black Widow cufflinks.” Peter was emitting at the rate of approximately five words per second – impressive really. Moments like these, Tony kinda got why they called Peter his spiritual heir. Also – holy shit that was MJ stalking through the crowd towards them, resplendent in red and calmly murderous.

Peter grabbed at the first glass that floated by on a server’s tray and shoved it into Tony’s hands. His fingers curled around the glass stem on autopilot – ooh, Dr Pepper – even as he stumbled a few steps ahead, being not-so-gently-nudged at the back by a _certain someone_ who needed to keep a lid on the super strength, darn it.

“Okay, so we’re apparently having a toast now.” He hadn’t even spoken _that_ much louder than his usual volume, but it was like a ripple effect: the clusters of people around him immediately quietened down, and forty seconds in, Tony was counting, the entire hall was hushed and staring at him. It was scary, almost. Humbling.

“Right, so. I’d have kept you guys waiting, but a certain spider-themed superhero isn’t feeling very heroic right now – so here I am, delaying impending doom with a toast.” Tony lifted his glass a bit recklessly to a now-still MJ, halted in her warpath about twenty metres away. She was smiling though, so maybe homicide wasn’t on the horizon. “To be honest, I’m getting a Terminator-esqe ‘I’m gonna be slaying twenty minutes in the future anyhow’ vibe from his lovely spouse, so this may all have been in vain.”

“Timing ain’t too bad, the press are outside anyway so you’ve skipped the hassle of calling a conference to break news of the divorce.” Tony acceded, and scattered laughs broke out in a sea of shining, amused faces. God, this felt surreal. “See, no, you’re doing it wrong, that pause was meant for the awkward silence. Maaaybe a scandalised gasp. Instead you’re all just smiling at me like I’m some deranged uncle at a wedding, which fair, I am.”

“But you know me. You know me and you know this toast isn’t getting any better from here on out, yet you’re standing there anyway all happy ears instead of booing me off. And that’s…that’s pretty special.” From the corner of his eye, Tony could see Peter quietly creep up to where MJ stood, cufflinks catching the light again as he scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. Could see MJ’s arched eyebrow, the little quirk to her lips as her fingers slipped into the crook of her husband’s elbow. Tony smiled. “And I guess that’s what we’re all here to celebrate. Something special.”

And then, like it had been perfectly choreographed though Tony couldn’t have dreamt up this kind of symmetry – there was movement by the door. Tony’s eyes flitted over for a single instant, enough to catch the tall figure that had just ducked in; candelabra light gleaming off his favourite blue shirt and grey-blonde hair.

Tony’s free hand reached up to tug at his own lapels, fingers smoothing over the outline of a chain through the silk of his shirt. “Ten years ago, this young little upstart, newest addition to the Avengers, vanishes in the middle of a post-mission clean up. I attempt to track him down, for reasons that have everything to do with a touching, almost parental concern; and not influenced at _all_ by how brain-devouringly boring clean up duty is.”

Chuckles everywhere, though Tony’s gaze went winging back to the rear of the crowd, where a familiar figure had appropriated himself a glass and was leaning against one of the pillars. Prime posing location, right next to one of the biggest candelabras – Tony highly approved. “As expected, I find him hanging out, upside down, from the newly refurbished A on top of Avengers Tower. Goes there every time he has a decision to make, probably thinks all the increased bloodflow to the head is going to make it work better – I don’t have the heart to tell him otherwise, poor lad.”

“It’s there, both of us sitting on the middle bar of the A like a park bench, that he tells me, ‘I think I wanna marry MJ’.” The good-natured laughter so far quietened down; everyone’s gaze redirected to the couple in question – but Peter and MJ were looking at him, soft-eyed and perfect.

“Of course, being the elder, mature adult that I am, my mind immediately flicks to the practicalities.” His tones veered towards something almost serious – for all of three seconds, because he was fooling nobody. “Namely, the location of MJ’s burial place and whether necrophilia is still illegal in the state of New York, though a part of my mind does think that Peter could do better than a moonwalking has-been. I don’t get too far beyond, ‘I didn’t think you even liked _Thriller’_ before I am summarily reminded of the _other_ MJ, Peter’s cool, alternative-culture girlfriend.” And there she was now, rocking a red jumpsuit and a self-engineered wedding band, with a ‘damn straight’ smirk curling up her lips. Sure, Tony was a spectacular specimen of his time, but hell if this new generation wasn’t something else. “Y’know, in that she doesn’t give a rat’s ass what people think, and believes in a fair, just society and the betterment of human kind.”

“So I’m stuck there asking the obvious, which is, ‘why do you think you should marry her?’” And he’s trying to hold on to the lighthearted tone, he was, but it’s hard to not let sincerity sneak in when you’ve got Peter Parker watching you deliver a toast in his honour, luminescent in his happiness. When you’ve got a crowd of people you love and respect hanging on your every word – and Steve Rogers at the back of said crowd, glass untouched in his hand; gaze undimmed by time, as steady and unwavering as it was twenty years ago. “And Peter answers back, the most assured I’ve ever seen him, ‘Because I want to’.”  

The words were coming slowly, shaped by Tony’s inadequate voice with as much significance, as much unadulterated earnestness as they deserved. “He says, ‘We share things in common, but… it’s more that it already feels like we’re a team, me and her. We don’t always get each other, but we listen. We always listen. We have our fights, but we try to communicate _through_ that and we don’t make excuses.” It all sounded so…inexcusably simple, narrated by a man who knew through time-tested experience how much it wasn’t. And there was at least one other person here today who knew it too. Tony cleared his throat, soft and uncharacteristically unobtrusive. “We’ve lived with the best and worst in each other. And I love her.’”

“And that’s when it strikes me, an honest-to-Thor epiphany right in the middle of this twenty-one year old rugrat prattling to me about love.” A wry, amused sound escaped his lips – memory hazy and rose-toned, but still so vivid. “ ‘Cause you see, I’d been expecting a laundry list of perfections – ‘oh MJ so smart’ and ‘oh MJ so pretty’ and ‘she makes me crack up like a loon’. But Peter didn’t say any of that.”

“Peter wasn’t telling me how great MJ was. He was telling me how great they were _together_ .” Tony’s chest was squeezing on itself, the sheer _pride_ that surged within a little difficult to contain. “And that’s a detail that we long-in-the-tooth, stodgy adults – with all of our realism and all of our practicality – forget so easily. To put it in sporting terms: it isn’t about the player of the match.” And it was the most involuntary thing in the world, to raise his eyes again and meet Steve’s steadfast eyes, that littlest curve of his lips from across the hall. “The love of your life, the most incredible person you’ve ever known. It’s about the team.”

“So I turned to him and said, ‘well, I don’t know about love. But all that other stuff you mentioned sounds pretty fantastic’.” Peter was leaning into MJ’s side now, with all the light of the world in his eyes, while she gave his elbow an affectionate squeeze – Tony blinked rapidly, eyes burning with a curiously sweet sting. “And he goggles at me and goes, ‘you’re the only person I’ve asked who thinks I’m not crazy.’ Of course, cut to ten years and now, we’re gathered here commemorating the occasion solid proof was _finally_ obtained that I’m smarter than the rest of you sane, mature, non-epiphanised people.” And glassy-eyed or no, Tony still toasted the air with more than a slight touch of glee, voice hoarse and delighted all at one go. “I told you so.”

“So while we’re all standing around, let’s also raise a glass to Peter and MJ – who somehow, despite belonging to the same species as the rest of us who screw up on a daily basis – have managed to do everything, absolutely right by each other.” His jaw might have cracked a little, from the ache of grinning at the man who was dearer to him than any child he could’ve ever had – all the while the best guy he’d ever known, who loved _him_ , watched on smilingly from the distance. Maybe it was just the Dr Pepper talking, but this felt like one of the moments all those other moments had been leading up to. “I think you might be what marriage is supposed to look like. And here’s to ten more years of schooling us in being awesome.”

 

 

_Past:_

 

The sky looked like something out of a painting.

Not acrylic or oils, heavily wielded – but something softer, like swathes of water colour splashed across the canvas of the heavens. That strange shade that dwelt between pastel pinks and blues, freely flowing from one to the other – the colour of daybreak, fresh and clean.

Everything seemed to glow very faintly. The skies were reflected in the glossy facades of skyscrapers, in the water puddling on the sidewalks, like this was a dawn after a night of torrential rain.

Tony drew the crisp air in, lungfuls of cool breath that were exhaled just as quietly. The city seemed muted, but like everyone was merely asleep – like New York was teetering on the cusp of opening its eyes. The only sounds that reached his ears were that of the suit: flex, release and clank as he took one step after the next. He wasn’t wearing his helmet. It would’ve seemed incongruous had it been his nanite suit, but this was the Mark VII armour.

He’d missed it. They were all significant in their own rights, the Mark I that set him free, the Mark II that lifted him to the clouds – but there was something inescapably…singular, about this one. Maybe it was just the nostalgia, maybe the visceral sensation of being inside the suit of a hero on a team of heroes. This was the armour that had dismantled a Chitauri whale, that had directed a repulsor at Loki’s head, that had been caught on countless cameras and immortalised in photographs…the very first ones, of the Avengers.

He’d missed it.

He didn’t know how long he’d been walking for – it would have been all too natural to try and fire the thrusters, but something whispering at the back of his mind stoppered that impulse. Instead, he fell to instinct and kept walking, flex-release-clank accompanying him down uncountable blocks: 17th, 18th, 19th streets, down and down till Seventh Avenue. Came to a lumbering stop, and if he raised his head and looked left, he could spot the…what used to be the Avengers Tower fifty metres away.

Tony looked right.

He couldn’t see as well as he would have if he’d been wearing the helmet, but that particular shade of blue wasn’t hard to miss. At the next intersection, stood a figure hugged head to toe in an eye-watering hue, snatched straight out of the American flag.

Steve turned his head, and Tony was probably just imagining it, but the sudden impression of a solid gaze pinning him down was hard to shrug off. They stood still for protracted moments, sightlines ensnared and legs unmoving, before Tony saw those shoulders swivel and scarlet boots begin to take the first steps toward him.

Tony waited.

With his approach, all those little details of that first suit that had simultaneously aggravated and thrilled Tony resolved into clarity again – the clunky, candy-red gloves to match the boots, the chunkier belt, the two silver stripes running down the shoulder joints, the skintight fabric with its almost offensive simplicity. He’d called it spangly, the first time round. If he’d known it would be the only time, that Steve would come outfitted in a navy-and-grey more suited to the modernity of his times when they’d meet again…well. Maybe he’d have gotten over his adolescent resentment a little quicker, and indulged his childish amazement a bit more.

Steve reached him, pale-cheeked and muss-haired, like his cowl had just been knocked loose. He wasn’t carrying it either, and Tony spared a moment to mourn its absence. It felt freeing, in a way, to desert self-delusion and admit that it would have been nice to see that bright white A again, outlined in patriotic blue.

Eyes that were a few shades lighter, flicked over him head to foot, just as scrutinising as Tony’s own. Steve’s voice barely carried when he spoke, but his tone wasn’t unreadable, not really. “I’ve missed that armour.”

Tony’s lips twitched upward, like trying for a shape they’d long forgotten, or hadn’t ever learned. It didn’t seem like a betrayal to try, though. Not anymore. “Wanna walk?”

Steve fell into step beside him, matching every length of Tony’s stride. The breeze caught stray, sweat-sodden strands of his hair, made them dance about his forehead in entrancing motions. Caught the contortions of his voice too, brought the quietly enunciated words over to Tony’s ears. “Eye of Agamotto? Or Mind Stone?”

“Neither.” Tony had no evidence to substantiate the certainty in his voice, yet certain he was. He pulled in another, cleansing breath, and let his words twist into something ironic. “This is the work of the Reality gem.”

For the next five steps, Steve didn’t respond. Barely a sound intervened in the silence, except the rhythmic clanking of the suit, the rise and fall of their breaths with the wind. And then, “D’you think there’s any way we can get out of it?”

“Despite what pop culture would have one believe, it’s hardly as simple as clearing a video game level. Fight through the projections, get the McGuffin-y physical representation of our hearts’ deepest desires, learn The Lesson, and bam – we’re out of the delusion.” It would be so…primally satisfying though, to beat the shit out of his issues. Then again, nine out of ten of his enemies in real life tended to be physical manifestations of his own screw ups anyway – the tenth slot being reserved for the odd alien, of course.

Fuck those aliens.

More quiet – Tony glanced to the side to meet those blue irises again, that seemed distinctly unable to pull away. Steve’s jaw worked silently for infinite moments, before words seemed to spill out unconscious of himself and everything else, soft and faintly remembering. “S’been a while since I heard you talk like that.”

“S’been a while since I did.” A while since his mind had stood so still, since his breaths had fallen so evenly. And all as they were trapped here in a constructed reality, while humanity faced an extinction level event. Tony’s mind had always functioned in odd ways, but this was inexplicable even for him. This peaceful skyline arrayed before his eyes now was a lie, there were portals over New York again, his worst nightmare was coming true –

But then their footsteps were slowing as they neared the inevitable destination, the suit whirring to a standstill. Their chins were lifting up as one, gazes settling on…on what would always be Avengers Tower, tall and gleaming in the light of dawn like not a day had passed since two thousand and twelve.

His knees were folding of their own accord, titanium hitting concrete with a reverberating clank. Tony ran gauntleted fingers over the smashed steel girder closest to his feet, following the slightly jagged lines. Judging from the shape, this had probably been part of the ‘K’. The last time, he hadn’t really come out of the Tower to see the mangled remains of the ‘STARK’ sign on the ground for himself, content to survey from a height as they were shipped away – to repair a bridge in Brooklyn, ironically enough.

And wasn’t it indeed irony of the finest flavour, that Stark had to be shattered to smithereens to make way for the Avengers – but even as Tony went deliberately seeking for the bitterness in that thought, it eluded him. Just…looking up at that ramshackle A, barely holding on to the side of the Tower, set aflame in the light of the rising sun – there was something about that sight that was liberatingly impossible to regret.

It wasn’t like it didn’t hurt, anymore. Even when slates were wiped clean, their graphite-black newness stayed out of reach – maybe the visible marks had been scrubbed away, but the surface would always remain a little worn, a little grey, a little tarnished. Memories lingered longer than chalk, and Tony had never quite learned how to wash their taint away.

The hurt hadn’t left, but had morphed maybe – from a sharp, cleaving pain in his chest to something more bearable. It was the throb of a shoulder dislocated, hollow and jarring and faintly terrifying – except there was a sudden thud of Kevlar against concrete, and Steve was kneeling by his side, stroking bare fingers over the same lines that Tony’s hands were following. Tony blinked and looked away, but not fast enough to stop the ache _slamming_ into him with all of its metaphorical shoulder-setting glory – the impact thudding through bone as it jolted back into place, pain radiating through muscles gone loose and watery...the kind that made you gasp with the relief of it, the kind that flared white-bright for a second before ever-so inexorably beginning to fade.

It was beginning to fade.

 _That’s quite a bit of emotion for a big, ugly building -_ the words pre-planned and ready on his tongue, died on exit. For the better, perhaps. “Are you scared?”

Steve hummed. The sound was incongruous, yet strangely appropriate for the world they were inhabiting in this moment. His palms had stilled, fingers still stroking back and forth on the steel in tiny motions. “Bruce and Colonel Rhodes would move planets to get you out of here. We’ve got the King of Wakanda and someone who might just be an actual wizard working on this problem. ‘Sides, like you said, it’s out of our hands at this point anyway.”

 _We are not_ _calling that cape-wearing quack a_ ** _wizard_** _– Rogers, you take that back right now._ It was...bizarre, how effortlessly the atmosphere between them could turn to the light-hearted bickering of the distant past if he so chose; or just as easily go the other way, recent histories fraught with blunt words and twisting hurt _–_

 _–_ but maybe the past wasn’t their only recourse.

_“–this isn’t an emergency….will you listen?”_

Maybe there was a choice that lay beyond that.

“I was thinking more about the alien conqueror waiting outside this dreamscape.”   

Steve’s gaze flicked up at that, an unswerving look accompanied by, strangely enough, a wry, almost sardonic twist of the lips. “Yeah, another one of those. Who’d have seen that coming.”

Tony smiled back, balanced on the knife-edge of sharp. “Don’t bait me, Rogers.”

“I’m not, actually.” An exhale that sounded more resigned than amused, mouth softening imperceptibly. “I’ve never disbelieved you, Tony. Never thought you didn’t have a point, when you’d go on about the dangers that waited out there, ready to descend from the skies. Things like these, Loki, it’s just…” Steve lifted his chin, blue eyes darting to the sky like they could still see leviathans curling through the air. “They don’t stop. They never stop. First war I ever fought, they told us we were fighting to end all wars – and the only way to keep on and on, get up in the morning and wear the uniform another day, was to believe them.”

“- _but_ _isn't that the mission? Isn't that why we fight, so we can end the fight, so we get to go_ ** _home_** _?”_

Easiest thing in the world, to fall back to that familiar, old argument – except. Except that this time, Tony didn’t want to. Not because he believed any different; but because Steve did, and at some point in the interminable past, Tony had woken up in the morning at peace with that.

(not nearly as simple as it sounded. But it also was, just as the only thing stronger in this moment than his need to argue, was his need not to.)

“Fear comes from…a place of doubt, I think. A lack of trust.” Steve’s hands pulled away from the girder, drawing back slowly over his thighs to come to a standstill. The lines of his face had fallen still too, a barricading stoicism that always rose in these moments – doing little to betray the emotion battering his insides. “Growin up poor as a church mouse, fighting in trenches…and I’d never been as down-to-my-bones terrified as I’ve been these last couple a years.”

“The possibility that everything I’d’ve given up my life for was a sham, was terrifying.” A deep, bracing breath. “The prospect of trusting other people was terrifying.”

“You’ve trusted other people.” Just because Tony didn’t make the list didn’t mean…didn’t mean Steve had to pass an overarching judgement on himself.

“Or maybe I just trusted myself and other people agreed with me.” The words stilled Tony’s breath in his chest, made him look up sharply to meet that ever-discerning blue gaze. Steve didn’t look away – and the message was clear. _Everyone but you._

Steve exhaled, breaking the eye contact between a breath and the next. Glanced up at the Tower, sunrise mirrored in his irises. “I always thought my faith was in people, not institutions.” The lines of his chin straight and golden-strong, words steady and unwavering. “But institutions are only as good as the people holding them up. Laws are only as good as the people holding them up.”

“I couldn’t sign the Accords because I didn’t…I was scared that they’d make us do things we didn’t want to do.” The words spilled into the coolness of the morning air, frank and uncensored. They weren’t particularly new, nothing that hadn’t been aired out in that first spat at the Facility. _What if this panel sends us somewhere we don't think we should go? What if there is somewhere we need to go, and they don't let us? We may not be perfect, but the safest hands are still–_    

Tony breathed. Strange, how sentiments he’d fundamentally disagreed with, words that had set his teeth on edge and his blood to boiling, now coloured by real, fallible _human_ emotion instead of a stoic mask…could sound so different.

 _I was scared too. I started all this, Steve. Privatised world fucking peace, and if I wasn’t accountable to_ **_something_ ** _– I might’ve released hellfire on the world, at the end of a road paved with good fucking intentions._

“But that day in Siberia,” Train of thought abruptly terminated, Tony blinked up at Steve, caught off-guard despite it all. Something soft and acrimonious curved Steve’s lips, though his eyes looked bleak. “I got the answers I was looking for.”

“You came.” Two words breathed out, like they were obvious and world-changing, all at one go. “Not because you’d stopped believing in the Accords, but because you…momentarily disagreed.”

“It was never about mindlessly obeying the letter of the law.” Steve closed his eyes for a long moment, silence and recrimination and realisation in one. When he opened them again, they reflected the sky. “It was about whether the law should apply to us in the first place.”

_Yeah. Yes. Yes exactly, I knew you would–_

“It doesn’t matter.” He should’ve felt something. Relief, vindication…even a pathetic dribble of _I’m glad I’m not the only one staying awake at night wondering if I’d gotten it wrong all along._ But he was a futurist, and it…didn’t matter anymore. “If the earth is still spinning by the time Thanos is gone, the people are going to be too grateful to care.”

No one was going to care. Which was…fine, good even. It solved their problems, got Ross off his back for good, restored the public’s trust in the Avengers which meant no more fugitive status…it was good. Even if a part of Tony remained, small and shifting with unease at the back of his brain, twisting disquiet at the pit of his stomach – the same that reared up every time he had to release tech into the production line without perfecting it. Sure there were deadlines, some things just weren’t _feasible_ ; and yet that shadowy thought persisted – _we could have done better_.

Tony smiled, small and unfeeling. “Regulation will die a natural death, of alien causes.” _And you’d be able to come home._

Morning was fully upon them, the first rays of sunshine rendering Manhattan too bright to look at; glass towers and steel facades aglow with light. Though they were crouching partly in the shade of Avengers Tower, a small patch of yellow-gold had begun to make its away across the bridge of Steve’s nose, contrasting with the unfair brilliance of eyes that wouldn’t stop looking at him. Steve wouldn’t stop looking at him, and Tony spared a moment to wonder if Steve too had acquired fluency in Tony’s masks; just as the passing years had necessitated Tony’s ability to peer past Rogers-branded righteousness.

“Do you think it should die?” Simple and direct. Tony didn’t speak, and Steve didn’t wait for an answer, lips flickering into something real. “Then it matters.”

Long, deep, full breaths. The sun was in his eyes, bright and smarting. His chest didn’t hurt.

“It was easier before, being unafraid.” Steve dipped his head, just enough for the sun to caress his cheek, illuminating tousled strands of hair. He looked like a man Tony had once opened his eyes to, one cloudless day in two thousand and twelve, smile strong and warm and hopeful, all at once. _We won._ “If you did the best you could, victory or failure was outside your hands, and there was no space for fear. Now, you need to consider if you’re standing for, fighting for the right thing.” A soft exhale. “Now you stay awake at night wondering if you’ve ruined things beyond saving.”

“But it doesn’t work like that.” And Steve smiled again, maybe not quite as idealistic, shadows peeking from the edges – but all the stronger for it. “There are things and people that exist outside my…scope, my understanding. The kind that are worth respecting, the kind that change minds. Kings and wizards and Norse aliens, even a space cowboy or two. Inspiring, heroic people.” That weathered smile again, this time just for him. “Stubborn people.”

“People that would stand by me if I was doing the right thing, who’d stop me if I was going the opposite way.” And there it was again, all the change of hearts withstanding – that firm-jawed conviction that could still steal Tony’s breath. “People who would save the world if I ever wasn’t good enough.”

“There’s nothing to be scared of, Tony.” And Steve’s jaw softened, lines of severity melding into the sunlight streaking across his face, eyes glimmering in faith and voice ringing steady. “Not when I know people like you.”

This moment…required something. A swelling crescendo of music to mimic the rising tide of _feeling_ in his breast, his heartbeat thundering along in his ears as accompaniment. But what they had was better – a snapshot of what their city was and could be again; limitless skies stretching over their heads and the symbol of their team, tall and gleaming and untouched.

What Tony had was Steve, here at the end of it all, imperfect and unvarnished and glorious; and for all the scars that Tony’s beating heart had sustained over the years, in this particular moment – he couldn’t find it within himself to be afraid.

“Tell me something.” Tony said – and it wasn’t a long time in coming. It was timed just right. “If I wanted to kiss you right now, would you let me?”

Steve blinked, and blinked again, each second punctuated by the flutter of whisper-thin lashes. By the fifth time, his irises had gone glassy, though his voice wouldn’t shake. “What do you think?”

“I think,” and Tony stretched his hand out, watching it shake almost imperceptibly. Watched Steve catch it in his own trembling palm, fingers snaking through the gaps and pressing the tremors into their knuckles. Hands clenched tight, heartlines aligned. “this isn’t how it happens.”

(and this was the part where the grip should’ve slackened, but Steve’s pulse under his own stayed steady. Waiting.)

“I think we’ve been through too much to settle for a first kiss that’s also our last. A last hurrah before the end of the world.” Tony stroked his thumb over knuckles he’d bandaged _and_ split a lip on – and felt something rise to his mouth, too darkly joyous for a smile. “I think we go out there – and we fight for the right to stay alive,” He brushed chapped lips over those ruinous knuckles, a quiet promise, “and we fight to come back to each other.”

He lifted his eyes. _And when we do, I’ll taste the blood on your teeth when you kiss me after we’ve won._

All those years of fighting face to face and fighting back to back, banter rising and falling, arguments simmering and boiling over, ebb and flow and yield and _pull –_ they all seemed in service of, in practice for this time, this second: staring at one another, locked in perfect understanding.

Steve dipped his chin slowly, an acknowledging nod, gaze unbroken.

They pulled back at the same time, fingers clinging for a moment before they parted, hands curling symmetrically around empty space. Steve pushed back on his heels and slowly got to his feet, knees straightening up until he was fully in the light. Tony didn’t follow him.

Steve’s words drifted over, barely above a murmur – though his eyes were burnished bright. “So long.”

And Tony watched Captain America walk away, gravel crackling underfoot, silhouette bleeding into the sun. Air flushed his lungs in deep, steady breaths – though his heart still thrummed, high and anticipatory.

_Be safe, Steve. Win._

 

 

_Present:_

 

“Tony.”

He snuffled against the pillowcase, breath moistening the cotton against his lips. The sweat on his back was still drying, the cool air in the room gusting past it pleasantly.

“To-ny.”

He rolled his shoulders back, luxuriating in the stretch of the muscles. Wriggled in place a little, till the mattress depressed even further – eyes blissfully closed, as they would rightly remain.

Until a finger prodded him in the side, scientifically engineered, Tony was certain, to be extra poky. “You know you’ll whinge about it later.”

“Trust me, I can whinge about it right now.” Tony’s mutter was lost somewhere in the pillow, till he lifted his chin with great effort and blearily cracked his eyelids open. “Who dares disturb the post-orgasmic slumber of a geriatric?”

“If you’re awake enough to say geriatric, you’re awake enough to pick your suit jacket off the floor.” Contrary to the words, Tony could feel someone nose into the soft crook between his neck and jaw - he tilted his head into it obligingly, soft wisps of hair brushing his cheek. The next words were quieter, gently winding into the shell of his ear. “You know I’d do it myself, if you’d trust me around your clothes.”

“Tom Ford is not machine washable, Steve.” Tony’s eyes were drooping again, the nuzzling having a decidedly soporific effect. “The man or his designs– _ow,_ asshole, did you just _bite_ me?”

Steve pulled back with a decidedly toothy grin, even as Tony rubbed at his twinging earlobe, blinking rapidly into the land of the living. “You seemed to be pretty open to it twenty minutes ago. Awake now?”

Tony kicked out at Steve’s shin – purely academic, just to demonstrate how _awake_ he was – except he’d forgotten this was _Steve’s_ bed and he rammed his toes into the wooden post at the corner instead. Because what use was living in the we-cater-to-everyone’s-crazy-tastes 21 st century if you couldn’t have a four poster bed – and Tony was sleeping with a _dork._

“Are you okay?” The dork asked concernedly, all the while Tony swore to high heaven, blinking up at the bed’s ornate canopy with watering eyes. “I think I can grab some ice from downstairs–”

“I’m fine.” Tony growled, sprained toes be damned, and _pounced –_ a knee flung over Steve’s abdomen, fingers scrabbling at the bare skin of his sides. He was triumphant for three shining seconds, Steve caught in place, face reddening with suppressed laughter; before the bastard squirmed out like an eel and flipped Tony on his back again, fingers descending like tormentors from hell.

“Sto – _fuck,_ st – stop!” Tony managed to wheeze out between soundless fits of the giggles. The merciless assault halted for a second, and Tony gasped for precious oxygen. “You…are…older…than fucking Dumbledore. Would you…act like it, for once?”

“Kettle, meet fireplace.” Sassy retort notwithstanding, Steve clambered off him and withdrew to a safe distance outside the tickle zone. “Last time, the blue waistcoat was on the floor for three days. And you whined about the wrinkles for _hours._ ”

“The creases show up more on the lighter colours, okay?” With a longstanding groan, Tony finally swung his legs off the mattress, spine cracking as he came to a sitting position. Though he’d firmly maintain that no one ever grew too old for tickling matches, his body was beginning to let its feelings be known.

“I like you in the black, anyhow. The fitted one, with your red tie.” Steve propped himself up on his elbows, eyes blinking languidly to half-mast. (Tony was happy to report that age had done nothing to curb Steve’s, ahem, _enthusiasm_ ) _._

“Ah, but darling.” Tony glanced back over his shoulder, hooking a thumb under the silver chain that still dangled around his neck, tags clinking with the motion; the only thing he wore to bed. “You know I had to match.”

The light in Steve’s eyes changed, banked heat dissipating in the face of something softer, brighter. Turned out, his soldier was more of a sentimental snot than a possessive one.

“That was a…” Steve cleared his throat casually, fooling absolutely no one – god, Tony loved him so much. “That was a really nice party, tonight. Pete and MJ loved it.”

Anybody else, and Tony would’ve mocked ‘ _nice?’_ to Jupiter and back. As it was, Tony just smiled, bright and blinding. “Thanks hon. I’d do it more often, except that would put party planners out of business. And that would _not_ bode well for the current state of American civilisation.”

Steve smiled back, a wondrous little curve of his lips, like it was a reflex utterly out of his control. “And an amazing speech."

“Same, except I’d be putting politicians out of business – which would make me the _saviour_ of American civilisation, and you know I’m not comfortable with that kinda pressure.”

Steve tilted his head just a fraction to the side – Tony had no idea where he’d picked it up from but it was endearing as _fuck,_ and Tony had spent close to a hundred thousand dollars over the years bribing people to not mention it to Steve. “You seemed a little out of it, there, after you finished.”

 _You noticed?_ Tony wanted to blurt; except of course Steve did. What exited his lips instead, was something a little less voluntary. “Gather ye rosebuds.”

Steve’s brows creased, endearing topped with delightful. “Pardon?”

“Gather ye rosebuds, i-it’s a…” Damn, he was stammering, this was _stupid. “_ It’s a poem.”

Steve’s eyebrows were practically meeting at the centre now, a perfectly-formed tableau of confusion. “Is that what they’re calling transistors these days?”

Aaaand the jackass was back. Wow, that had been short-lived. “No, it’s a regular old _‘miles to go before I sleep, shall I compare thee to a summer’s day’_ kind of poem – thanks very muchly for the snark, it was totally called for.”

Steve lounged on the bed, naked belly rubbing against the sheets – Tony glowered at him for good measure. “How exactly did you come across it?”

“If you _must_ know, they quoted it in one of my favourite shows–” Tony upped the intensity of the glower by a few degrees, “ _and_ the conclusion you’re drawing from that is totally unfair, considering how I quoted two other poems literally ten seconds ago.”

“Do you often get distracted by poems mid-celebration?” Steve enquired, throat bobbing in the process like a prime target for strangulation. “Overcome by the literary genius of Wordswo–”

“ _Steve._ ” The menace in question quietened down immediately, blue eyes watching him attentively. Tony turned his head away from that stare, back faced to the bed he was still sitting on, gaze dropping to the wrinkled skin stretching over his thighs. He pinched a little of it between his index and thumb, the tiny liver spot marring the skin changing shape with the action. “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. That’s the first line.”

_for having lost but once your prime,_

_you may forever tarry._

“It’s like… a call to arms, for lovers. _Carpe diem,_ you only live once. Don’t wait, or you might be too late. That kinda thing.” Tony released the skin, watched as the crease remained before he smoothened it out with a thumb.

The mattress dipped behind him; Steve had moved closer. His voice was calm, careful. “You think we waited too long?”

_I’ve known you for over twenty years. Sometimes I think I’ve loved you for each one of them._

Tony smiled, small and absent. “We aren’t exactly rose _buds_ , Steve.”

Another shift, sheets rustling quietly; Steve had moved up to sit behind him now. “Is that what you feel? Or what you think you should?”

A touch of warmth – Steve’s hand had risen to curl around his left shoulder, broad palm holding him steady. Tony pressed back into the touch, eyes shutting briefly.

“All these years, Tony. The fights, with or against each other. We’ve talked and laughed and argued and cried and…” There, at that spot between his shoulder blades – Tony could feel Steve’s breath on his skin. Warm and just the littlest bit shaky. “Has any of it, ever, felt like waiting?”

No. No, it hadn’t. Two steps forward, three steps behind…the two of them, making aching progress on a road of their own making. They’d sprinted and stumbled, sometimes stood still and refused to move on ahead, sometimes thought of turning away altogether.

“I didn’t deserve you then.” Steve pressed the words into his back, blunt and not-to-be-argued-with. “I don’t know if I do now. But you’re here, and I don’t feel the need to question any aspect of how the most…how the best part of my life came to be.”

“Flatterer.” Tony whispered and opened his eyes  – his fingers were entangled, drawing tighter and tighter around his chain while the plain rectangular tags tinkled against his chest. “Sure sounds romantic to say that I’ve waited my whole life for you, Rogers.”

“Except you haven’t.”

“Except I haven’t.” Tony relaxed his fingers and the chain unsnarled, tags swinging down to dangle against his breastbone, just over his scars. “You and I…we’ve worked our asses off to get where we are. Here, with each other.”

And the journey had been worth every staggering step. Learning to love this man was and continued to be one of the most educational experiences Tony had ever had – in maturity, patience, empathy, humility, faith, understanding, self-worth. As much as it was a struggle, loving Steve was also a foregone conclusion, but if they hadn’t met… “I don’t think I’d have liked who I was, if we hadn’t met.”

Steve p’shhhd against his shoulder – it was not very polite. “You would’ve been incredible. With or without me.”

“Maybe.” Tony assented, and meant it too. “But not the best version possible.”

Steve puffed a soft laugh, warm vibrations tingling against the skin of Tony’s back. Tony shivered pleasantly, voice lilting up in question, “What?”

“The first time I…the first time I thought of you like…” Steve trailed off, but Tony needed no clarifications. “When we were in the bathroom at that kebab place. You wanted to find things in common between us, and the first thing we agreed on was that we both liked being good at things.”

Tony hummed, half in remembrance, pressing back into the arm that Steve tucked over his stomach. “Well, would you look at that. And now we’re in accord that we make each other better. All worked out in the end.”

 _But this isn’t the end,_ and Steve didn’t say it out loud, but Tony heard it in the breath he held in a second too long. The words that did wind out were slow, and quiet. “And what about the days it doesn’t?”

“Then we keep working at it.” Tony twisted in the embrace, head turning around to look Steve in the ducked eye. Leaned forward and coaxed a kiss from those gentle lips, sharing his breath slow and easy, fingers weaving in silvered strands. His chain swung forward with the motion, Steve’s dog tags spinning lazily between their chests.

When they parted, Steve expelled his breath in a long, dragging, gratified sigh. Tony smiled. “Besides, I don’t know if I’ve ever shared this with you, Steven – but I don’t give up easy.”

“What a coincidence.” Steve tipped forward, pressing warm breath to Tony’s laugh lines. “Neither do I.”    

 

_~end_

**Author's Note:**

> Some quotes have been taken from various movies out of the MCU that I'm too exhausted to enumerate right now. 
> 
> _A day in the life of sliced bread_ is very much a real game that you can download off the play store, though whether John Oliver is really responsible for the V/O is debatable. 
> 
> Rhodey and Tony's nerd talk about planes was researched to at least seventy percent of my ability, feel free to make fun of me for any obvious mistakes.
> 
> The title as well as quotes from fic are taken from "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" by Robert Herrick. Yes, it's exactly as it sounds. Other poetry quotes include Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost.
> 
> And finally - to those waiting for a 'When The Stars Come Calling' update, rest assured that the update is indeed chugging along and I have not deserted it XP Real life and this fic took priority for a while, but Starkquill is next on my queue.
> 
> Thanks for reading - leave a comment if you liked!


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